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CVS Helps People to Better Health

(3BL Media/Justmeans) – Thanks to years of research, the links between smoking and cancer are now very clear. It is widely accepted that smoking is, by far, the biggest preventable cause of cancer. Chemicals in cigarette smoke enter our blood stream and can affect the entire body. This is why smoking causes so many diseases, including at least 14 types of cancer, heart disease and various lung diseases. In the US, it causes one in five deaths every year, and is why CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) has introduced, ‘Be The First’, a five-year, $50 million initiative to help deliver the nation’s first tobacco-free generation.

This campaign has lots of initiatives to keep the momentum going, including, ‘Helping Our Kids Kick Butts’, which is funded by the CVS Health Foundation. It is a new online educational program for the ‘Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids’, providing training courses for youth and adults to become tobacco prevention ambassadors. This portal will help build on the annual Kick Butts Day, a national day of activism that empowers youth to stand out, speak up and mobilise their communities in fighting tobacco use.

Another project, ‘Promoting Tobacco-Free College Campuses’ is focused on doubling the number of tobacco-free educational institutions in the States. CVS Health Foundation, with the American Cancer Society, will support more than 50 new schools in their tobacco-control efforts. Plus, the CVS Foundation With the Truth Initiative will also work together to help historically black colleges, universities and community colleges across the country to adopt 100% tobacco-free policies.

The ‘Raising Community Awareness – CVS Health’ is introducing a new approach to in-store fundraising with the American Lung Association’s LUNG FORCE initiative. This particular campaign will make it easy for customers to spread tobacco-free messaging in their communities and find resources to help their communities go tobacco-free.

CVS will continue to support community-based cessation programs for adults who smoke, through its ‘Smoking Cessation Services for Cancer Patients.’ The CVS Health Foundation will invest about $1 million to address ending smoking in the oncology care setting.

This is just one of CVS’s big commitments outlined in its latest annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report, entitled Prescription for a Better World. It gives an update on progress against CVS’s 2016 CSR goals and sets out several new performance targets. The results from 2016 span the company’s strategic CSR pillars of ‘Health in Action, Planet in Balance and Leader in Growth.’ Overall, CVS’ message is loud and clear – it wants to make health care more affordable, accessible and effective; it wants to provide customers with healthier and more sustainable products; and it wants to operate its business sustainably and responsibly. This is a company growing its business while, at the same time, helping people on to better health and making the world a healthier place to live.

Sangeeta Waldron writes on women and children; sustainability; climate change; social enterprise and social entrepreneurs. She has a particular interest in India. She is the founder of Serendipity PR, in London, UK, where she works with high-profile brands and organizations in the public, non-profit, and corporate sectors, winning awards for her work from the communications industry. She has been appointed to the Women In Enterprise Taskforce and was until recently chairman of London's leading conscious well-being organisation, Alternatives, which hosts leading speakers such as Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch and many other well-known names. She describes herself as a Spiritual Entrepreneur, Conscious Explorer; enjoys paying it forward and being a mum.